On 5th March a Lord's committee will discuss secondary legislation that will mean virtually all NHS commissioning will have to be done through competitive markets.

On 13th February 2013 the Government published the regulations (SI 257) under Section 75 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012. This Statutory Instrument (SI) will be going to the Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee on 5th March; this Committee will then report to the House and the regulations would become law on 01 April.

Assurances were given by ministers during the passage of the Bill through Parliament that it did not mean the privatisation of the NHS, that local people would have the final say in who provided their NHS.

The regulations just published break these promises by creating requirements for virtually all commissioning done by the National Commissioning Board (NCB) and Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) to be carried out through competitive markets, which will have the effect of forcing through privatisation regardless of the will of local people. They contain legal powers for Monitor to enforce the privatisation spontaneously or at the request of private companies that lost bids.

Please contact P.Murry at yrrumuk@googlemail.com if you are interested.

GREEN LEFT FRINGE AT AUTUMN CONFERENCE 2012

Both Green Left and the Green Party Trade Union Group applied to have fringes at the Green Party Conference September 7-10 2012, Conferences Committee turned down both these requests. Green Left decided to mount a fringe outside conference at 6-8pm on Saturday 8th September GPTU agreed to support this meeting and contribute towards costs of room hire. Video clips at http://greenleftblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/green-left-fringe-fringe-at-green-party.html